Weekly Hill Workout: Ups & Downs - We Had ‘Em

It was decidedly too cold and snow covered on our favorite outdoor hills, so Mike Martin, Mike Zimmerman, Meira Minard, and Mike Renz mustered up the courage to run indoors and complete a hill workout high atop the bleachers of the Rec Hall track. Marty ‘Colonel Mustard’ Mazur mustered up the courage to show up, but left his Over-the-hill-card back at the office and was unfortunately unable to join in on the bleacher antics, but was at least completing many laps on the hard concrete hoop we pretend is a track.

With Marty’s presence we decided to treat this hill workout like a pseudo-track workout, calling out a 3x3+1 of randomly prescribed intervals on the fly. That is, 3 sets of 3 passes through the bleachers (with a nice recovery lap around the track between each) followed by an “all-out” lap, which eventually slithered into about as fast as a slug’s pace with salt on its tail. Each pass through the bleachers is nothing to scoff at: consisting of 4 downs and 4 ups of sets of steps. To add to the enjoyment, it’s not as simple as just running up and down the steps….we played follow the leader, where the leader would call out things like “hop up left foot only,” “right foot only, skip the yellow steps,” “pretend you’re skiing,” “high-knees” (Meira’s personal favorite when said rapidly). We even threw in a backwards set, and some sidestepping for good measure. Fun was had by few, and quads felts the workout for sure. Quality workout for a makeshift hill routine!